Monday, 8 July 2013

Dwellers in Hooverville, Circleville, Ohio: photo by Ben Shahn (1898-1969), Summer 1938, for U.S. Farm Security Administration Circleville,
county seat of Pickaway County. Average small Ohio city, depending upon
surrounding rich farmlands for its livelihood. Because of its
non-industrial surroundings, retains much of old-time flavor.
Outstanding industries: Eshelman's Feed Mill. Employs 150-200 men the
year 'round. Pay averages about eighty-five cents an hour. Container
Corporation of America makes paper out of straw, can absorb by-product
of all neighboring farms. In addition, a number of canneries and feed
mills. During depression many farms of the district were foreclosed.
People who lost homes naturally gravitated toward the town. A town of
its character is unable to house new influx of population. Consequently
there sprang up around it an extensive Hooverville. Circleville got its
name through having been built in a circle as a better protection
against the Indians. (Ben Shahn's FSA general caption for his 1938 Circleville portfolio)

William Blake: The Divine Image

William Blake's plate of The Divine Image, from Songs of Innocence, 1789 (Library of Congress/William Blake Archive)

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

All pray in their distress;

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God, our father dear,

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine,

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, Turk, or Jew;

Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too.

William Blake: The Divine Image, from Songs of Innocence, 1789'And God said: Let us make man in our image': Genesis I.26 (King James Version)

Those FSA files with the original caption tabs pasted on the print help keep it real -- with the historical materialist realist Ben Shahn, it seemed a good idea to retain at least one of those files, documentary evidence of a sort.

He was born to a family of Jewish craftsmen in Lithuania, then occupied by the Russian Empire. When his father’s anti-czarist activities led to exile in Siberia in 1902. the family moved some 70 km away to a shtetl. Four years later Shahn's father fled Siberia; he ended up in the US, working as a carpenter in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where the family joined him.

At 14, Shahn apprenticed himself to an uncle who had a lithograph business. It was in the lithograph shop that he first developed an interest in art, particularly in lettering and calligraphy.

In night school art classes he developed the linear bias of a draughtsman, a bias which, like the heat of his political conscience, greatly affected his later work in painting and photography.

In his twenties, he spent nearly three years in Europe and North Africa. By the time he returned, he had dedicated himself to art, and to social commitment.

“I hate injustice,” he said. “I guess that’s about the only thing I really do hate and I will go on hunting it all my life.”

For a while, in his early years as a painter, Shahn shared a Manhattan studio with the photographer Walker Evans. In 1933, when Shahn's younger brother paid off a wager with a Leica camera, the painter turned to Evans for instruction in its use. Shahn recalled that the first lesson was delivered as Evans dashed out the door on his way to a photographic assignment and consisted of the shouted instruction, "f9 for the bright side of the street, f4.5 for the shady side!" Shahn never attempted to master the meticulous, view-camera approach Evans favored. He thought of his compact 35-mm Leica with right-angle viewfinder -- a device that permitted the photographer to face in one direction while pointing the camera in another -- as a kind of mechanical sketchpad.

In the first Circleville "Street Scene" here (following the eight "Hooverville" shots), the shop window reflection behind the two figures contains a self portrait of the photographer -- Shahn holding his Leica. with right-angle viewfinder.

Everyone forgot to keep building in circles, to protect against the abundance of varmints out there, or was it too late, yes, it was way too late. They were already part of the circle, I can see 'em, I can see some of them in the pictures now that I look again.

Ben Shahn's incredible photos here have relevance to the larger epochal saga of North America - like from the perspective of Olson.

Circleville (very well known in US archaeology) was built on top of & around a spectacular complex of Native American burial mounds & earthworks. These were made by people of the Hopewell Culture (aka the legendary Moundbuilders) & their civilization for unknown reasons was pretty well finished by 500 AD.

A former Circleville resident, Caleb Atwater, wrote "A Description of the Antiquities in the WesternCountry" (1820) which documents the earthworks & artifacts & also proposes some bizarre theories claiming Indians couldn't have been responsible for creating a sophisticated culture.

The "settlers" could just not get their minds around the idea that "savage Indians" were capable of producing anything close to the products of Europe.

This mindset accompanied Western expansion. When something challenged it - like Circleville - the tendency was to flatten it keep moving forward.

Circleville was built within the circular earthworks of a mound, I guess because the founding fathers thought it'd be cool! As the town grew, the mounds became less important to them, so they flattened any earthworks that got in their way. The town square was still a circle with the courthouse directly in the center of it. As time passed, the circle configuration got in the way of efficient traffic management, so by early in the 19th century, even it was done away with. Now all that's left of the circle is in the town's name.